Fort Hunter Day goes off without hitch

On Sept. 8, as the Fort Hunter staff watched in dismay, the Susquehanna River poured into the basement of the old Heckton United Methodist Church. The Fishing Creek flooded the historic tavern, stables, smokehouse, springhouse, covered bridge, pavilion, old bait shop and old gas station.

Fort Hunter temporarily became an island.

MARY KLAUS, The Patriot-News.Linda Kerlin of Elizabethtown spins Canadian hemp and wool from her Jacob sheep into yarn during Fort Hunter Day.

Fort Hunter Park, situated on a bluff overlooking the Susquehanna River, weathers its storms well, said Carl Dickson, director of the Dauphin County Parks & Recreation Department. In May, storms uprooted and splintered several of Fort Hunter’s “sentinels of history,” 80-year-old trees on the mansion lawn.

“This flooding was pretty bad,” said Dickson, looking at the falling river with relief. “We didn’t know where the water would stop. Things would have been much worse here if the river went to 29 feet as predicted.”

By Sunday, only a few reminders of Tropical Storm Lee were left. Visitors could see high-water marks and muddy streaks around the property. Straw was spread on muddy paths.

On the west side of Front Street, the park’s Heckton United Methodist Church had 4 feet of water in the basement. Park workers simply opened the basement door and let it out.

“When we moved the church up Front Street in 2009, we put it 20 feet higher than it was before,” Dickson said. “We built a basement with a door so we could let the water out, and that’s what we did.”

The federal-style Fort Hunter stone mansion, built in 1814, sits high enough that it didn’t flood, Dickson said. Visitors on Sunday toured the 20-room mansion, with 11-foot-tall ceilings, 6-foot-tall windows and fashionable fireplaces, mantles and trims.

On the east side of Front Street, the flood didn’t affect the Centennial Barn, a wooden Gothic Revival barn built during the American Centennial in 1876 and used as a dairy barn for nearly 60 years.

Nearby, the Fort Hunter Tavern, a stone Federal-style building used as a tavern from 1788 through 1812, got more than 6 feet of water in the basement and so much water on the first floor that all the carpeting had to be torn out. The building now hosts social events on one floor and the Dauphin County Parks & Recreation Department upstairs.

The previously flooded tavern lawn, springhouse and smokehouse on Sunday hosted Linda Zeiders chopping and canning cabbage, Jim Hoover demonstrating bee keeping, Peter Meloni discussing World War II soldiers, and Ken and Brittany Lynn showing how to play with toys from the 1800s.

Across the street, hot pink zinnias peeped up from the garden. Beets and onion plants looked unscathed by the flooding, but the water-logged tomatoes with split sides didn’t fare as well.

The stables had been hosed out and dried enough to host a 4-H exhibit of seeds and a Wildwood Nature Center display of the hides of a skunk, weasel, raccoon, beaver, squirrel, bobcat, coyote, river otter and more.

Ten members of Cub Scout Pack 284 of Lewisberry explored the Everhart covered bridge where an oily water smell remained.

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